Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War

by Jon Grinspan

The propulsive story of the Wide Awake anti-slavery youth movement, an overlooked but pivotal factor in America's march to the Civil War.

At the start of the 1860 presidential campaign, a handful of fired-up young Northerners appeared as bodyguards to defend anti-slavery stump speakers from frequent attacks. The group called themselves the Wide Awakes. Soon, hundreds of thousands of young white and Black men, and a number of women, were organizing boisterous, uniformed, torch-bearing brigades of their own. These Wide Awakes-mostly working-class Americans in their twenties-became one of the largest, most spectacular, and most influential political movements in our history. To some, it demonstrated the power of a rising majority to push back against slavery. To others, it looked like a paramilitary force training to invade the South. Within a year, the nation would be at war with itself, and many on both sides would point to the Wide Awakes as the mechanism that got them there.

In this gripping narrative, Smithsonian historian Jon Grinspan examines how exactly our nation crossed the threshold from a political campaign into a war. Perfect for readers of Lincoln on the Verge and The Field of Blood , Wide Awake bears witness to the power of protest, the fight for majority rule, and the defense of free speech. At its core, Wide Awake illuminates a question American democracy keeps posing, about the precarious relationship between violent rhetoric and violent actions.

Genres: History, Civil War, Nonfiction, Politics, American History, American Civil War, Presidents

352 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2024

About the author

Jon Grinspan is a historian of American democracy, youth, and popular culture. He is a curator of political history at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and a frequent contributor to the New York Times.

Reviews

[David Crumm · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Surprising Movement that Pushed the Cause of Abolition

In their heyday, a pro-Lincoln New York newspaper considered the Wide Awakes "the most imposing, influential, and potent political organizations which ever existed in this country."

So why haven't we heard more about them today? The one-time existence of this militant—yet remarkably well-disciplined—force seems to have faded from the pages of our history books largely because they were, indeed, a grassroots group of otherwise fairly ordinary folks. As an organization, they specialized in startling their opponents with unannounced appearances and, after Lincoln was elected and the war started, many enlisted in the Union Army itself. They liked to arrive without warning and they faded away almost as effectively as they appeared.

I'm so glad that someone of John Grinspan's stature has taken time to give us this gripping, well-researched volume. Grinspan is a curator of political history at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History, so we also are treated to 16 fascinating pages of photographs. That includes a photo of a perfectly preserved Wide Awake wrap-around "cape" from 1860 with the trademark all-seeing eye logo on the front. There's also a photograph of one of the Wide Awake trademark swiveling torches that they carried high atop their staffs in processions.

As a reader who knows a lot about American history, I'm not sure whether to admire or be horrified at such a group that tried its best to wield military scare tactics to defend Lincoln supporters and allies of abolition. The rise of armed groups trying to defend "American rights," of course, has proven to be lethal in recent years.

Even in their most effective year, the Wide Awakes were not entirely welcomed by Lincoln's allies. The group simply was too loud and unpredictable. When Wide Awakes camped too close to William Seward's home, for example, he complained that he couldn't sleep! Grinspan writes that the group "just showed up at their homes, at rallies, at hotels and restaurants, 17- and 23-year-olds traipsing through their gardens, calling for speeches, shouting hurrahs, dragging cannons, assembling bonfires on their properties." No wonder Seward had some sleepless nights!

And yet the aim of the Wide Awakes—seen through the social conscience of 2024—seems to have been selflessly heroic. Grinspan writes, "Wide Awakes formed to defend antislavery speech in a world where critics often faced mobs wielding bricks, bowie knives and pistols. They built a diverse coalition against the minority rule of a small cohort of enslavers. And they chose militaristic symbols to excite their supporters—and terrify their rivals." In other words, these grassroots antislavery activists were forming army-like units a year before the actual Civil War broke out.

As a lifelong student of our history and a journalist with a specialty in covering issues related to inclusion, I had heard of Wide Awakes before Grinspan's book. I was aware they played a role in the crucial pro-Lincoln campaign. But I had no idea of the complexity and the geographic range of their activities.

One example of the group's innovations that Grinspan documents is its ability to break through class barriers that had dominated American society up to that point. The movement's "greatest power was its ability to bridge class divides."

Finally, I have to point out in this review that Grinspan documents the way "my own" newspaper, The Detroit Free Press, did its best to try to humiliate and discourage the movement with scathing editorial coverage. I was religion editor of the Free Press for several recent decades but, like all contemporary Free Press journalists, we are well aware that "our" paper was ruthlessly pro-slavery and anti-Lincoln in that era of the 19th century. Grinspan correctly nails the Free Press editors of that era for being on the wrong side of history.

By the closing pages, Grinspan explains that he is well aware of the timely nature of the Wide Awake story. While the movement itself lasted in full force for only a year or so, the men motivated through the network moved, in many cases, en masse into the Union Army. Grinspan, for example, documents an event in which Pittsburgh's Wide Awake units gathered after Lincoln's election to reorganize themselves into an armed militia under Pennsylvania law.

Such movements—however we feel about their political purposes—should be taken seriously, Grinspan argues. They should not be dismissed, as many critical newspaper editors did in 1860, as just a bunch of silly hooligans. These were serious men who carried their 1860 passions with them into armed conflict in the war that followed.

I highly recommend this page turner and guarantee that, after reading it, you'll likely want to tell friends about it just as I am doing in this review.

[Porter Broyles · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a great and frustrating book.

I've been interested in the Wide Awakes ever since I first learned about them in Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Future books talked about them, but never more than a paragraph or so. I've always suspected that there was more to the story.

Grinspan's book proved there was. The Wide Awakes were a much more prominent and important group than we realized.

This book is absolutely fascinating in that it covers the existence of a major group that had a profound affect on America history, but has been forgotten. Imagine future historians delegating the MAGA movement as a footnote in the Rise of Trump? That is what happened with the Wide Awakes.

I suspect the comparison would make Grinspan cringe.

The frustrating part of the book is that he wore his political bias on his sleeve. He doesn't hide the fact that he doesn't like Donald Trump and sees him as a threat.

Before you get the wrong impression, I am a never Trumper. The man is a threat. As a lifelong Republican, I am ashamed of his becoming the messiah of the party.

BUT I didn't write a book wherein I explicitly state my political biases and how those influenced the presentation of the book.

Honestly, the book probably deserves 4 stars---maybe even 5 stars!

But, when you wonder if the facts of the 21st century are impacting the facts of the 19th century, it becomes impossible to do so.

It is such a same.

The book is well written AND well researched... but everytime I encountered a fact that provided me with confirmation bias about Trump and the MAGA movement, the presentation was undercut by Grinspan's open bias---and his making modern day comparisons.

[Brendan (History Nerds United) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have heard of many movements started from unexpected means. However, I never expected one before the Civil War to be started by fashion. Yet, here we are.

Jon Grinspan tells the story of the Wide Awakes. Trying to distill just who the Wide Awakes were is a bit of a tall order and probably why Grinspan wrote the book in the first place. The simplest answer is some northerners were getting sick of the "Slave Power" which was controlling American politics right before the Civil War. A few guys put on some capes and a political club was born.

There is a lot of excellent research done by Grinspan. The Wide Awakes almost defied being tied to anything specific and their quick rise and even quicker disappearance leaves a lot of questions. I enjoy reading about the Civil War and I found this to be a very interesting look at a group which is not well studied anywhere else. That said, it may be too into the weeds for a casual reader wanting to pick up a book with well defined characters. There isn't a way for Grinspan to pick a few people and follow their stories because the Wide Awakes were just too ill defined as a group.

If you are a Civil War nerd then I think this book must be on your reading list. For the casual reader, maybe pick up a more character focused book of this time period before deciding if this one is for you.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Bloomsbury USA.)

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

In books about Abraham Lincoln, the “Wide Awakes” who supported him are inevitably referenced, but mostly in passing. With their black capes, torches, silent nighttime marches and militaristic bearing, these groups of young men are supposed to be the “good guys,” in that they backed Lincoln and opposed slavery. But they always seem to come across as vaguely menacing and sinister - especially nowadays, as images of young men marching around at night with torches hits a lot differently today.

In most books, this dichotomy is never really explored, though, as whatever narrative the Wide Awakes happen to appear in typically just moves on, leaving the reader to wonder, just who were these guys, exactly?

Grinspan wondered that same thing decades ago, and this excellent book is the culmination of his years’ worth of work to find out.

The Wide Awakes, he argues, represented “the most consequential partisan organization in U.S. history.” A true grassroots movement, it turned working-class young people into political activists and helped coalesce antislavery voters behind the Republican party in the year leading up to Lincoln’s election and the subsequent Civil War.

The obligatory opening chapter that summarizes the entire antebellum period is actually very well-written and insightful, and does not come across as a perfunctory necessity before digging into the book’s main focus. Once we do get to the main focus, Grinspan’s diligent research shows. Unlike other political movements with murky beginnings, this one has a clear origin story, as Grinspan traces it back to the single individual whose actions launched a major political movement.

That movement, he explains, appealed to politically-aware young men, many of them too young to vote, who were “hungry for structure and belonging" - and were drawn to a group that was both more structured than political mobs of the time, and scrappier than other more genteel political organizations. (And over time, they came to include more than just men, and more than just white men.)

While the Wide Awakes, and their support of Republican candidates, helped unite the party, they were not directed by the party. Lincoln himself is described as not knowing quite what to make of them as they turned out to support him. “Never before had a grassroots movement taken on such momentum, so free from the guidance of elites, or even elders,” Grinspan writes. Once they realized the influence of this movement that had emerged independently of them, Republican leaders “had to figure out how to benefit from, live with, pay for, and make use of their strange new gift,” by turning these organically-organized pep rallies into votes.

The book deftly weaves together the stories of the Wide Awakes and the politicians they supported, as both the group and the party they backed gained prominence in tandem. The writing contains several modern allusions, and some colorful-but-cringey anachronistic phrases (the Wide Awake movement is said to have spread among young people “like a bad case of mono,” and a third party is described as drawing together “a dog's breakfast of everyone left.”) I can't say I particularly cared for those.

But for every weird reference, there are also plenty of droll comments that I actually enjoyed. Based on his acknowledgments and blurbs on the back of the book, Grinspan counts among his friends Ted Widmer, Alexis Coe and Adam Goodheart, all of whose writing styles are so cringey to me as to be painful. But Grinspan has a far better talent for the casually colloquial style that his friends aspire to - he uses it sparingly, and far more effectively, in a way that enhances rather than distracts from his story.

He’s also self-aware about the competing needs for thoroughness and brevity in a book like this, so as not to go off on unnecessary tangents. In describing the Republican convention that ultimately nominated Lincoln, he notes that “the twists and turns of convention nomination battles are usually most interesting to historians writing books about them,” and then proceeds to summarize the nomination battle in a few sentences. That’s honestly all that was necessary here, so it’s refreshing to see the author admit it and not subject us to details we didn’t need.

As the Wide Awakes helped push Lincoln to victory, Grinspan grapples with the questions of whether they were proactive or reactive - whether they anticipated division and war, or precipitated it. He concludes that, while they were not the militaristic radicals that the South believed they were, their actions and attitudes did embody all that the South believed it was up against as it decided to secede, and go to war.

Once the war began, the Wide Awakes as a group did not transform into a military movement, per se. But as individuals, a majority of its members ended up enlisting to fight for what they had marched for. Only then, Grinspan observes, as they “made the leap from faux militarism to the real thing,” did they finally become what “their enemies had always accused them of being.”

The story of the Wide Awakes essentially ends as the war begins. Their success was ultimately their undoing, as they served their purpose in electing Lincoln, preserving the Union and destroying slavery, so they had no reason for being after the war. Instead, in the book’s final chapter, Grinspan follows the movement's leaders and the Republicans themselves as they transformed into Gilded Age elites. Time had marched on, and the Wide Awakes had moved on.

Yet their movement has had a lasting significance, as the first of its kind to get young people fired up and involved in the political process in a way they never had before. And in our own time of fired-up partisan mobs and no shortage of political elites, the notion of a youth-led, unsullied, uncynical, grassroots political activist movement like the Wide Awakes seems not such a menacing and sinister thing at all. By bringing their story to light, Grinspan has done excellent work here illuminating their times, and our own.

[Adam Carman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most revisits to the Election of 1860 and the coming of the Civil War focus on the top--the politicians and elites that drove to the conclusion. This book focuses on grassroots movements--a group calling themselves "The Wide Awakes" that helped drive Lincoln's election. It tickles me that with conservatives using "woke" as an epithet, the original Republican was propelled to victory by a similar movement. This book focuses on more unknown folks--Black and White--that pushed the GOP to victory in 1860. Many interesting things comes by the wayside, including the detail, often overlooked, that while many narratives push the idea that the radical Seward was pushed out in deference to the moderate Lincoln, Lincoln was actually (at least in theory) more radical on many issues than Seward. However, it is also noted that Lincoln was uncomfortable with the young men dressed in military garb, marching and huzzahing and mixing it up with the Democrats, and sometimes tried to tamp them down. But it cannot be denied that this enthusiasm swelling up from the bottom propelled him to his victory and then switched over to form the basis of many Union regiments during the Civil War.

Grinspan notes that southern intransigence turned the Wide Awakes from a bunch of passionate dudes who loved playing military dress up into an actual para-military force. However, his determination to give both sides their due here sometimes leads to him harping on the theme of Wide-Awakes naively poking the dragon of secessionist violence until it reacted. He does, however, note that understanding the Wide Awakes and their role in the birth of the Republican Party does help to explain some of the twists and turns of the late 19th Century. The Wide Awakes, despite their passionate support for Lincoln, were not all diehard antislavery folks (many were quite racist) and many also harbored negative feelings towards immigrants and working class folks. Their inclusion helps us understand a bit more about why the GOP switched so drastically from fighting for the underprivileged during the War and after to being the arch conservative defender of big business. All in all, everyone who is interested in the Civil War will find some very interesting information here.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jon Grinspan provides us an original book that contributes to the antebellum period. People in the North were sick and tired of the "slave powers" in the South having all the say and their use of violence. A group of men put on black capes and became known as the Wide Awakes. The group was controversial, however. The South saw them as a threat to their way of life and the North getting their army ready to attack below the Mason-Dixon Line. People in the North saw them as defenders of Free Speech and other things. They helped defend Republican candidates of well. Grinspan does well explaining the politics of the time period. Worth a read because it tells a new story.

[David Kent · Rating 5 out of 5]

With exemplary research and accessible writing, historian Jon Grinspan enlivens the little-known story of the Wide Awakes. Begun on a whim and a stolen kerosene lamp, a handful of textile workers accidentally start a movement that helps energize the nascent Republican party and elect Lincoln. The story is, of course, more complicated than that, and the author brings this out in a comprehensive and entertaining way. Definitely a book worth reading.

David J. Kent
Author, Lincoln: The Fire of Genius
Immediate Past President, Lincoln Group of DC

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was by far one of the better books I've read this year. I found only one major typo: the commander at Fort Sumter was Robert, not John, Anderson. Aside from this I really didn't see any other major errors in the text. The book was fast paced and the narrative was very engaging. I also think this was the first book length study I've come across focused on the Wide Awakes. Very good writing and a must read for any Lincoln aficionado.

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detailed and interesting history of an under-researched and discussed, but definitely important, political movement in American Civil War history. I have my degree in history and this book was just so exciting to read. The preface itself gets the reader excited and explains how Grinspan started this whole project nearly 20 years ago. His storytelling of the history is extremely engaging and really paints the picture for the reader. And his voice in the writing is a great addition. It really reminded me of the wonderful reading experience of 1776 by David McCullough.

[Jarrod S]

Good research on an understudied topic, but good god this author pearl clutches

[Cheryl]

atlas obscura - I'm not much into history but this looks absolutely fascinating

[Rachael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an important addition to the story of the years leading up to the Civil War. Information about the Wide Awakes, who seemed to appear out of nowhere in 1860 and had evaporated into thin air within the year, is very hard to find. I myself became interested in the movement after reading a reference to them in a letter written to a relative during the Civil War. Until that point, I had never heard of the movement. Grinspan wrote just about the only article I could find on the topic at that time and he has expanded on it to give a complete account of the movement's formation, spread, and aims. He also discusses the impact that the Wide Awakes had on the 1860 election, the fear they inspired in the South, and the fate of the movement once the war erupted.
Grinspan writes in a chatty style- using 'dad' rather than father, for example- but information is well foot-noted and research is very thorough. Highly recommended.

[Matthew Borders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War, by Jon Grinspan, Bloomsbury Publishing, 352 pgs., pictures, notes, ISBN 1639730648.

While the term Wide Awake is often identified by students of the American Civil War as a pre-war Republican political club, the author, Jon Grinspan proves that it was far, far more. The Wide Awakes were more than a mere club, but a true grassroots political movement that took the country by storm during the 1860 Presidential election. Started by, and driven forward through young men who, in many cases, would not be old enough to vote in the election. The Wide Awakes were a direct challenge to the old guard of the young Republican Party, a challenge to “fogieism” for control of what direction the party was to take. The 1860 election was only the second Presidential election the Republican Party took part in, but the efforts of the Wide Awakes made sure that the economically diverse base of the party was heard.

Started in the tidy industrial town of Hartford, Connecticut, by half a dozen friends, the first Wide Awakes were young men from a variety of skilled and unskilled professions. These youths were not unlike many today, voracious devourers of news media, reading and debating politics amongst themselves and looking for an opportunity to make a difference. They were highly motivated members of the new Republican Party, a mish-mash of former Know Nothings, Whigs, Northern Democrats, Free Soilers, Abolitionists and a number of other failed or played-out political organizations all drawn together as a “systematic order of hatreds”. What forged such an alliance? The growing realization that the slaveocracy, and those who supported it, were subjecting the country to being ruled by a minority, the whims of the enslaver.

This anger, and the desire to do something about it, to force some real resistance to the southern appeasing Democratic Party, manifested in the hard marching and campaigning Wide Awakes. Uniformed in black lacquered capes and caps with torches held high, the Wide Awake clubs quickly spread from one side of the country to the other. Nominally a political club, almost from the beginning the Wide Awakes took it upon themselves to escort and protect Republican speakers at rallies, bringing them into direct contact with the often rough and tumble mob politics of the day.
Their very presence was enough to enrage many a political street gang and while attempts were made emulate the movement by other parties, those efforts consistently paled against the supposed 500,000 Wide Awakes, (Grinspan believes this was closer to 100,000) that had marched by November 1860 had rolled around. This populist movement, first resisted, but finally embraced by the leaders of the Republican Party, worked hard to spread Republican talking points, suppress Democratic ruffians and finally rally behind their party’s candidate, Abraham Lincoln. They worked right up to election day, escorting voters and watching the polls as well. Once the news broke of Lincoln’s election, no one cheered louder than the Wide Awakes.

How these young men managed to make this happen, how they campaigned and what they did once the victory was won, is analyzed in detail. While many believed that the election of Lincoln meant their job was done, most quickly realized that they were still needed and indeed, with war clouds on the horizon, the work was not yet over. I highly recommend this fascinating and very readable study of this political movement.

[Serge · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book opened for me a chapter of Civil War history with which I was thoroughly unfamilar. According to Grinspan, the Wide Awake movement, popular among working class whites in the Northeast, helped propel Lincoln to the nomination in 1860. They became the street muscle for an anti-slavery campaign that sought to meet the political violence of Southerners and Democratic sympathizes in the North with an equal measure of violence. As Grinspan repeats multiple times, they refused to be tame victims. Grinspan goes to great pains to make the crucial distinction between anti-slavery and pro-abolition. The youths in this movement inhabited a North nearly devoid of Blacks. Their banner "Land for the Landless rather than N**** for the N*****less captires the moral ambuguity of of street mob that enjoyed the terror that their black oilcloth capes and their metal battle-ready lanterns could inspire. Their origin story places them squarely in Hartford, headquarters to Colt and Sharps, and gun violence emerges as an important thread in their evolution. Grinspan highlights the appeal of the movement to young men enamored with Garibaldi and young women enamored with this particular variety of toxic masculinity ("Give us the benefit of civil war and put an end to it"). I was also pleased to learn more about figures such as Cassius Clay and Owen Lovejoy who were somewhat less defined in my memory of key persons in the run-up to the Civil War. Grinspan also shows how politically these ex-Whigs and reformed Know nothings made peace with some immigrants to swell their numbers for public spectacle. They relished the thought of being seen, drums beating and colors flying, as a conquering street army. They were the moderate antislavery throng that swept the moderate antislavery candidate Abraham Lincoln (as opposed to abolitionist Gerrit Smith) into office. They also precipitated the unavoidable war by frightening secessionists into accelerating their campaign ("Only secession can prevent the fate which Abolition will bring upon the white race : a ruling Black majority in the South")

[Bob Andrews · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Wide Awakes were a largely forgotten, youth movement formed to support Lincoln and oppose Slave Power in 1860.

Its founders became forgotten faces just as the Civil War cast a shadow over everything that had come before.

Grinspan does a good job. His history is well-researched and footnoted, his prose easy to read.

The Wide Awakes were a political movement with military elements, formed by six clerks from a fabric factory in Hartford, Conn.

Their presence in the north scared the south and prompted some observers to credit - or blame - them for creating a culture that made the war more likely.

They wore a uniform that included a black cape and cap, dark pants and dark shirts, carrying a torch on a long wood staff. They marched at night mostly, in formation, using instructions from a borrowed military marching book.

Just imagine. Thru darkened streets, the mostly young men marched in silence until someone shouted:

“Hurrah! Huzzah! Hurrah! Huzzah!
“Hurrah! Huzzah!”

And, oh yes. They weren’t about violence, but they fought back when bricks were thrown at them by rowdy, drunken Democrats.

Their popularity grew. Six clerks soon became 36 marchers, then word spread and their numbers grew so fast nobody really knew how many Wide Awakes marched except they seemed to be in every northern city.

In response to threatening hecklers, the command went out:

“About Face.”
“Wide Awakes. Do your duty.”
“Charge.”

On those orders, a hundred Wide Awakes charged fists flying into the Democrat rowdies and more often than not, emerged proudly and peacefully to their formation.

There’s plenty of comparisons to the current MAGA movement, both good and bad, (the author is decidedly anti-Trump).

One could compare them with Brown Shirts of the 1940s, or the KKK of almost any era or the army of folks around Malcolm X.

But, to southerners, it seemed logical to look at their nighttime parades and think the north was training its young men in the art of war.

I’d put this in the must-read category for anyone interested in the run-up to the Civil War. And it’s just informative and enjoyable.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learning something new about an overlooked and/or underappreciated event adds shockwaves of mental activity to a still curious mind. If I could give 10 stars to Jon Grinspan's Wide Awake, I would gratefully do so because he has introduced a subject I never even heard about.
Grassroots youths who were not old enough to vote in the 1860 presidential election took action. It began in Hartford, Connecticut, among shop clerks who organized an effective group of men concerned about the future of "free speech" and the growing divide among the social and political forces of the years leading up to the contested and controversial presidential campaigns of 1860.
Grinspan's prose is tight and visceral. "St. Louis shivered with tension." His research took 17 years to accumulate with a cadre of professionals in institutions as large as the Smithsonian and as small as hometown museums and libraries. Also included were amateurs keenly devoted to the Wide Awake moment and eager to posit their findings and interpretations. Plain, old-fashioned research of the nitty-gritty is maybe easier with technology but nonetheless overwhelming.
The movement seemed at the beginning process-driven; the groups had a visual symbol and a uniform; they met and drilled as a troop like military men but with torches instead of guns. Not all groups were concerned about emancipation of slaves as they were about stopping the spread of slavery. In short, not all aligned with the same outcome of their organization. Racism had a place in some outfits. Blacks organized their own Wide Awake units.
Following the election of Lincoln, the tight-knit group of Wide Awake members transitioned in time to the recruits of the Union Army. They knew discipline, comradery and rank.
Some thoughts Grinspan expressed continue to rattle in my mind. Here are two: the systematic organization of hatreds is the first task of politics; "Sometimes history is written not so much by the comfortable victors as by the entitled and aggrieved." Food for thought is the "best pickle."

[Mr. Book · Rating 1 out of 5]

You can also see this review, along with others I have written, at Mr. Book's Book Reviews.

Mr. Book just finished Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln And Spurred The Civil War, by Jon Grispan.

This book was published in May 2024. The author is a curator of political history at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.

The Wide Awakes were a group of young northerners who formed a militant group to try to fight the suppression of abolitionist speech.

As the book points out, in 1857, just 2% of the population owned slaves, but still slave owners had control of the government from the time of the founding to the Civil War. I make the argument that this supports the fact that the United States certainly was not a democracy, it was an oligarchy. While I had known that the percentage of slave holders was small prior to reading it, finding out that the figure was just 2% was really the only interesting thing in the entire book.

While reading this book, I kept on wondering three things: when will it start to get interesting, when will I even start caring about what happens with this group and when the author make the case that this group elected Lincoln. The answer to all three questions were the same one word answer: never.

I give this book an F.

Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at Mr. Book’s Book Reviews, and Goodreads.

Mr. Book finished reading this on December 11, 2024.

[Ted Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very well written book about a heretofore overlooked part of the story of the onset of the American Civil War. The Wide Awakes were an political organization that organized itself, beginning in Connecticut, in the crucial election year of 1860, and took on a paramilitary "look," as they dressed in what appeared to be military uniforms. They were well organized and well trained and were designed to push back against what they saw as the "bullying" carried out by southerners, especially when it came to quieting the voices calling for the end of slavery and the election of Lincoln. They began to appear at political rallies carrying signs and holding oil lamps that they used as "weapons" to defend the politicians whom they were supporting. To Northerners they came across as an intimidating "security force" that was finally standing up for free speech and majority rule. To Southerners they came across as an emerging military force preparing to invade the South in order to secure the end of slavery. Prior to reading this book, I knew very little about this group, but the author makes a convincing case that their activities during the campaign of 1860 was one of the factors that precipitated the beginning of secession. John Brown's 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry had terrified the South, but he had been executed by the beginning of 1860. However, the Wide Awakes seemed to take up his mantle and thus came across as a generalized movement comparable to what John Brown represented. The author of the book is hoping that his work will spur a new examination of the significance of this organization, and I believe that he has gone a long way in achieving that goal.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you think you know all about that turning point in US history from the 1850's into the Civil War, there's couple of authors you might not have read. One is Heather Cox Richardson. Another is Jon Grinspan.

Lost in the carnage of the Civil War is the formation of the Wide Awakes; youthful clubs that would march about in capes and torches to promote abolition of slavery, and the eventual election of Abraham Lincoln. It grew into a large movement in less than a year, and with Lincoln in office the North grew into a strong economic force while the South lost its economic and political power. Just as the Republican and Democrat parties seem to be the opposites of what they are now, so has the North had its Rust Belt and the South has been revived.

But another lesson is about racism. Being opposed to slavery did not mean being opposed to the unequal treatment of all people of color and of women. Power does tend to shift in very small, incremental steps, and expecting much more than that in a lifetime is often unrealistic. Here we are again. The return of Andrew Johnson in Trump. Allowing traitors to go unpunished, and foreign adversaries to influence our elections. But I digress.

I love hearing a story that I was never taught. It doesn't necessarily mean it was intentionally removed from our histories. There's only so much room for all that's happened. But what the Wide Awakes did triggered a movement that would strongly influence several decades in the future.

You don't want to miss this story!

[John Gattermeyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The history is new, the research seems strong, the prose is readable. But the whole book has an undertone of the Eric Andre shooting meme, where the south is the shooter, the gun is the wide awakes, and the union who gets shot. The author then asks who could the wide awakes do this?

I will say, it’s not a 2 star review because the author starts the book by pointing out the southern violence long preceded the wide awakes and he ends with a similar point. But the entire middle of the book is this sort of “the republicans were bad people too, the wide awakes were racist, and they were naive for not realizing that their actions would cause the civil war.” Which feels like it’s absolving the South way more than we should be doing in 2025 (especially with the increase in “slaves we’re actually treated pretty good and we’re lucky to be slaves!” Storyline being pushed by prager.

Finally, it’s difficult to get through a book that treats the civil war as a tragedy that may have been avoided but for the wide awakes demonstrations. It was exceedingly violent and shouldn’t have been necessary. But it was necessary. Avoiding the civil war seems like a worse outcome than having it.

I love this area of history, the lead up to the civil war. However, I would recommend Fields of Blood, Demon of Unrest, and Emancipation of the Mind long before I’d suggest this. The both-sidesing of the civil war is not something we should be doing in 2025.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Wide Awakes are one of those subjects that often merit only a passing mention in even the most magisterial histories (a ctrl+F of James McPherson‘s Battle Cry of Freedom will yield no results) but yet managed to capture the imagination of many readers nonetheless. Here John Grinspan, whose articles both scholarly and popular have done more to bring them out of the shadows than anybody else, has finally delivered a full and authoritative account of the movement from its birth to its postwar influence and beyond. That alone would be worth a five star review, but what really sets this book apart from scores of other Civil War era works is its utter readability. This is a page turner, bristling with witty turns of phrase and funny anecdotes. This transforms, what could’ve been a dry accounting of the mostly forgotten principals of a mostly forgotten social movement into one of the best nonfiction books of 2024 so far. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, anyone with interest in the Civil War, or even just 19th century America in general owes it to themselves to pick up a copy.

[Mary Kesson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thought of diving into books about the Civil War can be overwhelming, but I do enjoy more narrow histories about the times before and after. This account of the election of 1860 was very interesting. I wasn't aware of the many factions within the electorate who were united in their opposition to the minority rule of slave owners but not at all unified in their political beliefs. And telling this story through the narrative thread of the Wide Awakes makes for a good read.

This book will be of particular interest to those from The Land of Steady Habits (Connecticut).

My favorite tidbit of history from this book is that at the time, the government did not print ballots for elections. Your (partisan) newspaper or printing press published ballots and handed them out to the electorate. So when you read that Lincoln was "not on the ballot" in the South, that doesn't mean exactly what you think it does. It happens because there was no pro-Republican printing press extant locally to make those ballots.

[Jeff Bracken · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an enlightening and well researched history of the Wide-Awake movement in the North in the run-up to the election of Abraham Lincoln, its effect on the Civil War and, its lingering importance in American politics and culture after the war. It is very readable and very interesting. The author effectively describes the important pre-War belief in the North that the South unfairly controlled the national political party and that fact, rather than a strong belief in abolition, was the reason for Lincoln's election. In one respect, however, the author seems clearly wrong as he states his belief that the Southern economy was much stronger than the North's prior to the Civil War. The effect of that assertion is not particularly clear (it may be that he thinks that is a reason for the North's dislike of the South). but it is clearly wrong. In fact, several prominent Southerners wrote well-researched papers which establish that the South's economy was suffering (vis-a-vis the North's) due to the deleterious effects of the slave-based cotton economy.

[Angel Martinez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty neat accounts of events. Liked the focus on St Louis as a little "flashpoint" btwn the Wide Wakes and the Democrat-aligned equivalent. Shows how crazy the political scene was in the USA during 1859-1861

Adding more to my review after it was posted because I'm thinking about it more and I kinda hated this book. Yeah the info was interesting and I liked learning about the people involved in the events the narrative presents, but it really rubs me the wrong way when I read a book I expect to be a historical nonfiction book only to find that the author has given the people involved in the history spoken quotes that have not been confirmed. This happens when the author is retelling the original meeting and organization of the Wide Awakes, in the first couple chapters. I wanted to keep learning about that period in history so I bore with it but it disappointed me a bit. Just not my style of reading, personally.

That being said I did like the quotes the author included when he could actually provide a source for the quote (a newspaper, a letter/correspondence, etc.).

[Bookends: Literature & Libations · Rating 5 out of 5]

We should all be thankful that Mr. John Grinspan and his thesis advisor at the University of Virginia began a search on the words Wide Awakes. Mr. Grinspan has written a terrific account of the
Wide Awakes. I believe he has woven them into numerous important events in 1860 and 1861 leading up to the Civil War.

Like me, I think you will find this book very difficult to put down. I could not wait to turn the page and discover what Mr. Grinspan had in store. I hope the reader will discover a work that is not limited to a particular movement during a very eventful time in America. Like many wonderful works about the Civil War, I firmly believe many aspects of Mr Grinspan's work are very relevant today.

[Jeremy Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a marvelous book by a captivating historical writer which is a must read for anyone interested in, and wanting to know more about history leading into the Inauguration of Lincoln and the war of Secession (1850's -- 1860's). For those of us who think we know a lot about these times, there is much more. A similar book by Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest; tells this period story from the viewpoint of the taking of Fort Sumpter. Jon Grinspan does an outstanding job of unearthing a little know today, but important movement of the times; the Wide Awakes.

[Devon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for book club.

Very privileged to have the author come to our group to answer questions and talk about the book - he was very clearly knowledgeable about the subject. I had never heard about the wide awakes before and it’s interesting to think about a mass movement in times before social media and when you could just fire into crowds without consequence I guess?? Interesting to see that they disconnected the idea of slave power from black people being Human, pretty hard to wrap my head around that.

[Jim Curtin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never heard of this group, but the entire concept sounded so familiar; a liberal party, frustrated by the conservative side of the aisle using violence, generates a paramilitary group to check the violence, and then sees that group demonized as incitement to violence by the conservatives.

The parallels between this history and antifa/ woke politics were easy to make, I hope that the author did overstate the inevitability of this group developing and the civil war starting though

[Greg Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative and engaging. I read this after the synopsis struck me as having a number of parallels to modern politics, and as I read it I kept wondering if Grinspan would articulate how this moment in history relates to the current moment. He finally touches on that in the "Coda," which I found a very satisfying way to wrap the work. High recommend from me.

[Thomas Mackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

New study of a very important political movement. Meaningful now as we witness political language of campaign, fighting blurring the line between political hostility and physical violence. Perhaps our generation will understand the campaign of 1860 than most generations between ours and theirs.